The Three-Box Solution Playbook

4

CORE COMPETENCIES

The next crucial step in building a Box 3 strategy is identifying your organization’s core competencies—the things that separate you from your competitors. Core competencies may seem straightforward, but to correctly identify them, you need to look beyond your products, customers, physical assets, and talent. Those are capabilities and advantages. Core competencies, on the other hand, are about know-how. Always an intangible asset, core competencies are something you do, and they can never be a single skill.

For example, one of Honda’s core competencies is its ability to design, engineer, and manufacture small engines. Let’s assume for the sake of simplicity that Honda has one thousand engineers in its R&D lab in three underlying ...